About James

James-Blackburn

Blackburn’s Per­sonal Growth His­tory

James wasn’t always inter­ested in per­sonal growth.  Dur­ing his school years, he was more inter­ested in sports, social­iz­ing and hav­ing fun, with lit­tle inter­est in edu­ca­tion.  (Although he made good grades.)   It wasn’t until he was 17 years old that he read his first book (unas­signed) called How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple, by Dale Carnegie.

Real­iz­ing that many of the prin­ci­pals being taught in this book were not fol­lowed by the adults he knew in his life includ­ing teach­ers, he won­dered what else could be out there that he wasn’t being taught?win_friends_influence_people

“I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I still don’t and that scares me.”   It was Dale Carnegie and high school wrestling together that laid the foun­da­tion for my hunger and com­mit­ment to per­sonal growth and becom­ing the best I could be.”

Pro­fes­sion­ally, James sold the #1 sold cut­lery in the United States and claims this was the best sales train­ing a young per­son could ever receive and it was free.  After grad­u­at­ing from Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity, James jumped right into finan­cial ser­vices with a small local bou­tique firm fol­lowed by 6 years with 2 of the largest banks in the coun­try as a finan­cial adviser.

James advised clients of the bank in areas of insur­ance and finan­cial mar­kets for 6 years.   Dur­ing this time he also com­pleted the course­work required for the most rec­og­nized finan­cial plan­ning des­ig­na­tion in Amer­ica, the Cer­ti­fied Finan­cial Plan­ner (CFP).   After dis­cov­er­ing deeper truths about him­self and mul­ti­ple facets which were miss­ing in the “finan­cial plan­ning” process, he decided to take a year off to search for answers.

In his research and trav­els all over the coun­try for 15 months, James dis­cov­ered that the real rea­sons peo­ple were fail­ing mis­er­ably in their finan­cial plan had noth­ing to do with the type of insur­ance or invest­ment they pur­chased.   It had to do with their edu­ca­tion, their men­tors and their earn­ing abil­ity, none of which a finan­cial adviser in a bank was pro­vid­ing them.

think_and_growIt wasn’t until James was 23 years old when he read the book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill (for the sec­ond time) that he became addicted to per­sonal growth.   He real­ized how impor­tant it was for him to grow as an indi­vid­ual every wak­ing moment of his life.  There was no time to waste.

As quick as he could he began read­ing, lis­ten­ing, and col­lect­ing what has amassed into a per­sonal library of over 400 books and audios in areas such as self image, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, rela­tion­ships, phys­i­cal health, men­tal per­for­mance, mar­ket­ing, sell­ing, finan­cial plan­ning and busi­ness.

“I wanted to become the best I could be and I became obsessed with con­stantly want­ing to share and regur­gi­tate what I learned to fam­ily and friends so they could expe­ri­ence per­sonal growth too,” says James.  “What frus­trated me the most was, I had so much to say, so many top­ics I was pas­sion­ate about, so many peo­ple I really cared about, and not enough time in the world to talk to even a frac­tion of them.

To make mat­ters worse, I real­ized that many of my fam­ily and friends did not want to hear about how to improve their life from me or it just was not the right time for them.” James Blackburn Mountain Climbing

This left me with no one to share my pas­sion and knowl­edge with.   I needed to find a new audi­ence of peo­ple who were inter­ested in hear­ing about my expe­ri­ences for their own ben­e­fit,” says James.
I still wanted to make this infor­ma­tion avail­able to my friends, fam­ily and peo­ple I loved in such a way, where they could access and uti­lize it at their own will and time.
James’ phi­los­o­phy was molded: To develop peo­ple to max­i­mize their true poten­tial and increase their earn­ing abil­ity.  That was the birth of James Blackburn’s PersonalGrowthPages.com.
James and his wife Olga have been hap­pily mar­ried for 6 years and reside in down­town Chicago. They enjoy trav­el­ing, music, the­ater, movies, ten­nis, run­ning, and their two lovely cats Lucy and Kozi.

James and Olga Blackburn To Learn More About James Black­burn, visit James-Blackburn.com

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